Extinct language

Short description: Language that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers

"Dead language" redirects here. For the process of language extinction, see Language death. For the album by The Flatliners, see Dead Language (album).

Eteocypriot writing, Amathous, Cyprus, 500–300 BC, Ashmolean Museum

An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers.[1][2] A heritage language or sometimes a dormant language is an extinct language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation.[3] Languages that have first-language speakers are known as living languages.

Languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca.[4][5][6]

As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the languages spoken at that time will have become extinct by 2050.[7]

## Contents

* 1 Language death
* 2 Language revival
* 3 Recently extinct languages
* 4 See also
* 5 Notes
* 6 References
* 7 Bibliography
* 8 External links

## Language death

Main article: Social:Language death

Sisters Maxine Wildcat Barnett (1925–2021) (left) and Josephine Wildcat Bigler (1921–2016);[8] two of the last elderly speakers of Yuchi, visiting their grandmother's grave in a cemetery behind Pickett Chapel in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. According to the sisters, their grandmother had insisted that Yuchi be their native language.

Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by a different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish as a result of European colonization of the Americas.[9]

After a language has ceased to be spoken as a first language, it may continue to exist as learned, second language, such as Latin.[10]

In a view that prioritizes written representation over natural language acquisition and evolution, historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave a corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language), as is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German.[11] This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register.[12]

Bilingual Latin–Punic inscription at the theatre in Leptis Magna in present-day Libya

Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization, cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in the dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and French.[13]

In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first – and most commonly – a subordinate population may shift abruptly to the dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language).[14] A now disappeared language may leave a substantial trace as a substrate in the language that replaces it. There have, however, also been cases where the language of higher prestige did not displace the native language but left a superstrate influence. The French language for example shows evidence both of a Celtic substrate and a Frankish superstrate.

Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as the Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss.[13] For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language.[15][16]

Language death can also be the explicit goal of government policy. For example, part of the "kill the Indian, save the man" policy of American Indian boarding schools and other measures was to prevent Native Americans from transmitting their native language to the next generation and to punish children who spoke the language of their culture of origin.[17][18][19] The French vergonha policy likewise had the aim of eradicating minority languages.[20]

## Language revival

Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by a new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism "sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope,[21] though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant.

In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language. Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as a vernacular language. The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the adoption of it as a lingua franca amongst the Jewish community in Palestine prior to 1948 (which grew as a result of successive waves of immigration by Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, many of whom spoke Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic dialects), the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1948) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked.

Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as a liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it.[22]

## Recently extinct languages

This is a list of languages reported as having become extinct since 2010. For a more complete list, see Lists of extinct languages. List of languages by time of extinction |}

## See also

* Category:Extinct languages
* Endangered language
* Globalization
* Language attrition
* Language death
* Language revival
* Language teaching
* Lists of extinct languages
* Lists of endangered languages
* List of modern literature translated into dead languages
* List of revived languages

## Notes

## References

1. ↑ Matthews, P. H. (2007-01-01), "dead language" (in en), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (Oxford University Press), doi:10.1093/acref/9780199202720.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-920272-0, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199202720.001.0001/acref-9780199202720-e-799, retrieved 2021-11-14
2. ↑ Lenore A. Grenoble, Lindsay J. Whaley, Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization, Cambridge University Press (2006) p.18
3. ↑ "What is the difference between a dormant language and an extinct language?". 15 February 2013. https://www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/what-difference-between-dormant-language-and-extinct-language.
4. ↑ Byram, Michael; Hu, Adelheid (2013-06-26) (in en). Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. Routledge. ISBN 978-1136235535. https://books.google.com/books?id=XxZbhSsqnUQC&pg=PT739.
5. ↑ Walt, Christa Van der (2007-05-01) (in en). Living Through Languages: An African Tribute to René Dirven. AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. ISBN 9781920109707. https://books.google.com/books?id=HecNAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA100.
6. ↑ Hall, Christopher J.; Smith, Patrick H.; Wicaksono, Rachel (2015-05-11) (in en). Mapping Applied Linguistics: A Guide for Students and Practitioners. Routledge. ISBN 978-1136836237. https://books.google.com/books?id=sq5pdj2snokC&pg=PA115.
7. ↑ "English won't dominate as world language". NBC News. 2004-02-26. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4387421; Ian (2009-01-16). "90% Of World’s Languages Extinct In 41 Years". chinaSMACK. http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/90-percent-worlds-languages-extinct-in-41-years/; Ethnologue records 7,358 living languages known, "Ethnologue, Web Version". Ethnologue. http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp, but on 2015-05-20, Ethnologue reported only 7,102 known living languages; and on 2015-02-23, Ethnologue already reported only 7,097 known living languages.
8. ↑ "One of the Last Remaining Native Yuchi Speakers Passes" (in en). June 2016. http://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/one-last-remaining-native-yuchi-speakers-passes.
9. ↑ Njogu, Kimani (April 2022). "How Colonialism Causes Language Endangerment" (in en). https://www.goethe.de/prj/zei/en/art/22902448.html.
10. ↑ Matthews, P. H. (2007-01-01), "dead language" (in en), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (Oxford University Press), doi:10.1093/acref/9780199202720.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-920272-0, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199202720.001.0001/acref-9780199202720-e-799, retrieved 2021-11-14
11. ↑ "Library : Liturgical Languages". https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2786.
12. ↑ Sichel, Barb (2019-11-12). "Understanding Extinct Languages: When and Why They Die Off - ILS Translations" (in en-US). https://www.ilstranslations.com/blog/understanding-extinct-languages-when-and-why-they-die-off/.
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Malone, Elizabeth (July 28, 2008). "Language and Linguistics: Endangered Language". National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/endangered.jsp.
14. ↑ Thomason, Sarah Grey & Kaufman, Terrence. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics, University of California Press (1991) p. 100.
15. ↑ "Could social media save endangered languages?" (in en). https://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/article/how-languages-become-endangeredand-how-social-media-could-save-them-0.
16. ↑ Atifnigar, Hamza (July–August 2021). "Exploring the Causes of Language Death: A Review Paper". https://www.ijassjournal.com/2021/V4I4/4146575866.pdf.
17. ↑ "The History of Native American Boarding Schools is Even More Complicated than a New Report Reveals". 17 May 2022. https://time.com/6177069/american-indian-boarding-schools-history/.
18. ↑ Levitt, Zach; Parshina-Kottas, Yuliya; Romero, Simon; Wallace, Tim (30 August 2023). "'War Against the Children'". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/30/us/native-american-boarding-schools.html.
19. ↑ "Legacy of Trauma: The Impact of American Indian Boarding Schools…". https://www.pbs.org/native-america/blog/legacy-of-trauma-the-impact-of-american-indian-boarding-schools-across-generations.
20. ↑ "La Vergonha and the Future of Occitan Language | Performing Trobar". https://trobar.stanford.edu/la-vergonha-and-future-occitan-language.html.
21. ↑ See pp. 57 & 60 in Ghil'ad Zuckermann's A New Vision for "Israeli Hebrew": Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5: 57–71 (2006). Dr Anna Goldsworthy on the Barngarla language reclamation, The Monthly, September 2014
22. ↑ Ernštreits, Valts (14 December 2011). "Lībiešu valodas situācija" (in lv). http://www.livones.net/valoda/?raksts=8701.

## Bibliography

* Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
* Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) (1992) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-013404-9.
* Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-74624-5.
* Davis, Wade. (2009). The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. House of Anansi Press. ISBN 0-88784-766-8.
* Dorian, Nancy C. (1978). 'Fate of Morphological Complexity in Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic.' Language, 54 (3), 590–609.
* Dorian, Nancy C. (1981). Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7785-6.
* Dressler, Wolfgand & Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth (eds.) (1977) 'Language Death' (International Journal of the Sociology of Language vol. 12). The Hague: Mouton.
* Gordon, Raymond G. Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
* Harrison, K. David. (2007) When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York and London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-518192-0.
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
* Mohan, Peggy; & Zador, Paul. (1986). 'Discontinuity in a Life Cycle: The Death of Trinidad Bhojpuri.' Language, 62 (2), 291–319.
* Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1992) 'Theory of Language Death', in Brenzinger (ed.) Language Death, pp. 7–30.
* Schilling-Estes, Natalie; & Wolfram, Walt. (1999). 'Alternative Models of Dialect Death: Dissipation vs. Concentration.' Language, 75 (3), 486–521.
* Sebeok, Thomas A. (Ed.). (1973). Linguistics in North America (parts 1 & 2). Current Trends in Linguistics (Vol. 10). The Hauge: Mouton. (Reprinted as Sebeok 1976).
* Sharp, Joanne. (2008). Chapter 6: 'Can the Subaltern Speak?', in Geographies of Postcolonialism. Glasgow, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4129-0779-8.
* Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. (2000). Linguistic Genocide in Education or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-3468-0.
* Thomason, Sarah Grey & Kaufman, Terrence. (1991). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4.
* Timmons Roberts, J. & Hite, Amy. (2000). From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-21097-9.

## External links

* The Dodo's Fate: How Languages Become Extinct
* The Foundation of Endangered Languages
* Endangered Languages

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Extinct languages by continent

* Africa
*   * Asia
* Europe
* North America
* Oceania
* South America

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Endangered languages by continent

* Africa
*   * Asia
* Europe
* North America
* Oceania
* South America

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* e

Languages by continent

* Africa
*   * Asia
* Europe
* North America
* Oceania
* South America

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